PowerEdge Management

This module will introduce functionality that allows a user to monitor and perform maintenance to their PowerEdge environment in Dell AIOps. We will look at how Dell AIOps provides PowerEdge information in the following categories: Health, Inventory, and Performance and then see how we can initiate system updates for PowerEdge servers.

System Health - PowerEdge

In this lesson, we will look at the Proactive Health Score for PowerEdge servers.

Let's again return to the multi-system view by selecting **Monitor > Infrastructure** from the left hand navigation pane.

We are currently viewing this page in **Card** mode. However, we can change the viewing method to be in **List** mode. Select the icon with the 3 vertical dots and lines.

We are now in **List** view. Select the **Create Report** **icon** (middle) in the top right corner to go to the **Report Browser**.

Here we can see all of the report options that we have across all of our devices. In addition, we have the ability to add content to the report. Feel free to click around this page to see all that it has to offer. Once satisfied, select the **Monitor > Infrastructure** path again on the left-hand side.

Back in our Infrastructure page, we have the option to export the current page to a CSV file. To do so, select the **Export CSV** icon (rightmost icon) in the top-right corner.

Exporting to CSV is not supported in Simulation Mode.

Let's go back to **Card** mode. Select the **Card** mode icon.

This Hands-on-Lab is conducted by using the **Card** mode, but the entire demo can be done via the **List** mode as well.

Click **"Health"** from the left hand drop down.

Click **"Servers"** and then "**All"** from the right hand drop down.

This page now shows the health scores across all of the monitored PowerEdge servers in the environment. The first thing to point out is the summary banner along the top of the page that summarizes the number of servers in each Health Score category and the number of servers by issue count. This is useful for servers when there are potentially very large numbers of systems being monitored.

To further filter our servers, select the **Funnel** icon in the top bar.

A recently added filter feature for PowerEdge servers is the option to filter by **Connection Type**. In this case, we can filter by **Dell Connectivity Client** connection type for PowerEdge servers.

Click **"WIN-SYS02PE173"** hyperlink.

We are directed to the **Health** tab for the PowerEdge server. We see there are 5 issues in the Components category. Two of them are 30 point deductions and three of them are 10 point deductions. Several of these issues are temperature related. As we know the health score is determined by the issue with the highest deduction.

Click on the second 30 point issue: **"CPU0001: CPU 1 has a thermal trip (over-temperature) event."**

In this example, we see that we are given various things to check including looking for failed fans. We also see that Dell AIOps is reporting a removed or missing fan which is likely related.

Select the **System Alerts** tab to see the alerts with their severity and status.

Select the **alert details icon** next to one of the alerts to see additional information including a detailed description and a recommended action to resolve

We can now see additional details for the alert.

System Inventory - PowerEdge

This lesson provides an overview of the PowerEdge configuration information provided by Dell AIOps.

Click on **Monitor > Infrastructure** from the left hand navigation menu.

Click **"Inventory"** from the left hand pull down.

The top of the page provides a banner summarizing the number of servers by **Health Score, Power State, and Support Contracts Expiring**. This is useful due to the potential large number of servers being monitored by Dell AIOps.

Click **"WIN-SYS02PE86"**

We are directed to the **Inventory** tab for this server. The top half of the screen shows various attributes for status, identification, location, management, OS information, hardware, and chassis information. Note that the Management IP, OME IP Address, and OME Collector are links that allow us to open the iDRAC management interface, the associated OME instance, and the details page for the Dell AIOps Collector associated to this server.

The bottom of the Inventory page has five tabs: **Hardware, Firmware, Licenses, Contract, and Management Info**. By default, the Hardware tab displays Device Card Information. We will open each tab to see the information presented for each.

Scroll down and click **"Network Devices"**

We now can see information on the server's network cards. In this example, each NIC has a details button. Select the **Details** icon for additional information.

We can see the device name along with the IP address and other network information.

Select the **Partitions** tab.

We see a listing of 4 partitions. Expand **NIC.Integrated.1-1-1** for additional details.

Below we can see the additional details related to **NIC.Integrated.1-1-1**.

Click the **Firmware** tab.

We can see a listing of different firmware and BIOS versions on the server along with their installation date and latest available version. The View in System Updates link takes us to the System Updates menu where we can initiate firmware, BIOS, and application updates for this server. Click **"Licenses"**

The **Licenses** tab lists out license information associated with the server's iDRAC including the Type (Perpetual or Evaluation), Description, Expiration (if type is Evaluation), and Entitlement ID. Click **"Contract"**

The **Contract** tab lists out the details of the associated contracts for the server including the Status, Description, Type, and Start and Expiration Dates. Click **"Management Info"**

The final tab is the **Management Info** tab and this provides the iDRAC management information.

System Performance - PowerEdge

This lesson discusses some of the performance monitoring and forecasting capabilities for PowerEdge.

Click **Monitor > Infrastructure** from the left hand navigation menu.

Click **"Performance"**

We can see several key metrics for each server along with a 24-hour chart of CPU usage. There are 24-hour averages provided for GPU Usage, CPU Usage, Memory Usage, System Board IO, and SYS Usage as well as the last recorded value for Inlet Temperature. Click **"WIN-SYS02PE86"**

PowerEdge performance charts include 24-hour charts for key metrics as well as performance forecasting charts. The 24-hour charts include anomaly detection identified by shaded blue areas and configuration changes identified by boxes along the X-axis. Feel free to scroll through to see the various performance metrics. Click **"Forecast"**

Dell AIOps utilizes predictive analytics to understand the historical trends and usage to determine when key server resources will reach their limits. By telling us when a resource will be fully utilized, Dell AIOps can aid in workload planning to help us understand if we need to add resources to a server or migrate certain workloads to lesser utilized systems. Feel free to scroll through to see the various performance charts.

System Updates and Maintenance - PowerEdge

This lesson shows us how we can perform maintenance operations such as LED blink, power operations, and device data refresh from the Dell AIOps UI. We will also see how we can perform 1:many firmware and BIOS updates. The Resource Operator Role is required to perform any system updates and maintenance.

If you've performed the previous lesson in this module, you should currently be on the **Performance** tab of the **System Details** page for PowerEdge **WIN-SYS02PE86**. Scroll to the top and click on **ACTIONS**.

We can see the various maintenance options that can be initiated from Dell AIOps. These include blinking the system identification LED to help identify and locate the server in the datacenter as well as various Power Control operations. Click **"LED On"**

Click **"OK"**

Select the **View Job** link in the Blink LED Job Created window.

Alert! The Blink LED Job Created window disappears after a short time. If you miss it, the created job information will still be visible on the Job page.

In a live environment we would be directed to the specific maintenance operation on the **Jobs** page. In simulation mode, we are just directed to the top job. Change the Viewing data from to **All Jobs.**

Expand the **Blink LED ON** row in the Jobs list to see an example of the information provided. The **Details** window on the right shows who created the job, the status, and the start and end times.

We'll now see how we can perform firmware updates through the Dell AIOps UI. Click **Manage > System Updates** from the left hand navigation menu.

Click **"SERVER"**

We perform server updates by creating a compliance report, comparing a set of servers to a baseline. The servers and baseline are selected when we create the compliance report. Click **Create Compliance Report**.

Type in a name and click **Next**.

We can see that we can create a compliance report based on previous months' Lifecycle Controller Catalogs. Let's choose the first April 2026 26.3.5 and click **Next**.

This last step allows us to select which servers we want to include in the report. Note that the filter allows us to narrow down our selection based on different fields including product, collector, site, location, and custom tags. Because we can't save a compliance report in the simulator, just click on **Cancel**.

Let's proceed using the Lab Env Test 1 compliance report. Click **Lab Env Test 1**

Select **Group by** and change to **System**

We now have the updates grouped by system and sorted by severity. Select the top server.

We can see that there are **2** updates that will be applied. Click **"Update"**

The **Update Devices** window appears allowing us to choose to perform the update now, wait and update on next reboot, or schedule the update. If we choose the **Update Now**, we can choose from the list of Reboot Types. In this example, choose **Schedule Update,** pick a date and time, pick any of the Reboot types and then click **Next**.

We can now choose to reset the iDRAC before applying the updates and clear any active or pending jobs on the server prior to applying the updates. As noted, these options are only applicable for firmware updates. Leave them unselected and select **Next**.

The last step provides a summary of the updates being performed. In a production environment, selecting Finish would direct us to the Jobs page. Since we reviewed the Jobs page earlier in this section, simply click on **Cancel**.

Congratulations! You have reached the end of this particular lesson. Click **Close** in the top left corner of this script to return to the demo guide.